A Gem

Preparing for tonight's Inquirers' Class, I look at Percy Dearmer's Everyman's History of the Prayer Book and land on this nugget about the Thirty-Nine Articles:

'We naturally turn to the Title-page and the Prefaces for our answer. Now the Title-page is a full and descriptive one; and at the very outset it removes a common mistake. It makes no mention of the Thirty-nine Articles; for they form no part of the Prayer Book. They are bound up with it, just as hymn-books often are; but it is a mistake of the printing authorities to compel us to buy the Articles whenever we buy the Prayer Book; and it gives Church folk the impression that the Articles are binding on them, which is not the case — for a layman is perfectly free to disagree with the Articles, if he chooses. They are admirable in many ways, comprehensive and moderate, though written in an age of bitter controversy; but it would be absurd to Suppose that they could not be improved after the discoveries and experience of three and a half centuries. Nothing has been done to improve them.'

Case made, point taken.

(from the online version of said book)

Behind the headline

Many headlines and lead sentences about the candidates in Los Angeles and Minnesota read something like this: 'Two Episcopal dioceses have nominated gay and lesbian priests in same-sex relationships to become bishops, testing a weeks-old policy and the Episcopal Church's place within the global Anglican Communion.'

What they don't always say is that the selection process had been going on well before what General Convention decided on the 14th of July (la fête de la Bastille!). Who knows what these dioceses might have done had GC not passed a resolution similar to D025... would they have gone ahead with the names or not?

My prayers are for all of them. May God hold them close.

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Getting elected is going to get harder and harder with the news hounds on the net sniffing out people's sermons and newsletters. I probably would get hoisted up on a gibbet for some of what I have written in sermons. Just this past Sunday someone said at the end of the service that they liked the sermon but wanted me to say one more thing, that Jesus' death and resurrection forgave our sins. Knowing the person's background, of a much more Calvinist bent than Anglicanism, I knew that what they were getting at was that Jesus' death atoned for our sins. I have a real hard time with atonement theology, especially the notion that Jesus died for my personal sins and that it is all about personal salvation. I answered that when I get working on the Hebrew Scriptures, I tend to stay there and don't make the leap to the New Testament; it is implicit but I don't necessarily talk about it.

I appreciated the presiding bishop saying in her opening sermon that personal salvation was a heresy. Yes, because we are all connected and it is not just about Jesus and me.

But for this, I can be shot down for faulty theology.

[This post needs more fleshing out but it's time to go to work.]